🎈🍰🥂🎉 It's my Steemit Anniversary: 1 year on Steemit! 🎉🥂🍰🎈

Time flies when you're having fun! I almost missed it, but spotted it just in time two days ago that my Steemit 1 year anniversary was coming up, and it's today! Today (depending on your timezone!) it is exactly one year since I joined Steemit, and there is much to look back on!

Looking back

Much has changed since I first joined Steemit, which feels it was both only yesterday, as well as ages ago. Some things are different for sure. There are far less 'Steemit is so awesome I love Steemit do you love Steemit?'-posts these days than when I first joined. I remember back then the overall atmosphere was so exceedingly (fake) positive that it was hard to find anyone on here who was willing to be critical or 'real' at all. These days the attitude of most posters has changed and you'll find a lot more people willing to argue with oneanother. Some say the platform has hardened, but I think I prefer this real-talk more than the fake positivity that plagued the platform before.

I've seen people come and go too. I remember Jerry Banfield joined around the same time, and feeling annoyed and disappointed to see him booming almost instantly. I ended up argueing about something related to that with @lexiconical, who funnily ended up becoming the first real supporter of my blog at that time. I don't think I would've felt motivated enough to continue seriously blogging if it wasn't for his regular upvotes - the only ones I got that were worth anything. So, thanks @lexiconical !

I also remember when @haejin was new and only a small, unknown minnow with even less followers than me. I was actually one of his first supporters and re-blogged some of his earlier posts, and referenced him sometimes in my own posts in order to help him get more exposure. At the time he was making so little on Steemit, that I remember sympathizing with him because he was consistently pumping out his prediction-posts and making measly pennies like the rest of us. Once I remember him posting something along the lines of 'These posts take a lot of time, if you enjoy them please consider upvoting, because very few people do so'.

Other things haven't changed. People still complain that it's hard to get anywhere on Steemit, minnows still make terrible posts and spam is as rampant as ever. Many of the same top Steemians are still at the top - but some have also disappeared. Don't ask me which though - the quality and content of top level Steemians seldomly interests me and I rarely read their posts anyway.

5000 posts, 1700 followers, 216 SP

I've got close to 5000 posts and while many of these are comments, the list of my own original written content is quite significant: I've written hundreds of articles over the course of this past year. When possible I write at least one a day and when I can, I try to write more. So after a year the list of my own original content has grown quite long. Scrolling down my previous postings, I find that I'm quite proud of my blog. There's is very little that could qualify as 'bad content' if you ask me.

My Steem Power is 'only' 216 SP which is quite low compared to some others, but this is in part because I have invested a reasonable amount of my earnings into other cryptocurrencies. For the past 8 months or so, I have adhered to the 50/50 split and haven't powered down since then. At some point I figured if Steemit gives me so much, perhaps I should be fair and keep my SP invested as SP as well, so the 50/50 split made sense.

I've grown to 1700+ followers too! This may not seem much compared to some others, but anyone who's been Steemin' along knows how hard it is to find serious followers. I spent most of my first six months commenting on other people's posts to connect with others, and after about 500 followers I started steamSteemrollin' on my own postings' merits. There are many followers and readers that I frequently connect with and talk to, and I always love hearing people's thoughts in the comments. Writing my articles of course takes some time, so it's always encouraging to know that other people are reading them and finding value in them. The best times are when my posts directly influence one of my readers - for instance when I posted about registering the EOS tokens, and one reader who had forgotten thanked me for saving his EOS tokens. That felt like mission accomplished!

I wish I could find some way to break through to the higher levels on Steemit. By now I can sometimes show up relatively visible on the Hot pages if you scroll down a little, but I've never actually made it onto the Trending page yet. I wish I could somehow expose more people to my blog. I feel like I'm still somewhat hidden to the greater public, and when I look at the quality of the posts of higher earners (with the risk of sounding cocky) I can't help but feel like something isn't quite right when you put their and my posts, views & earnings side-by-side.

Still, my greatest achievement on Steemit by far has been to let go of such jealousy. I've found that it simply doesn't work, and other people's success does not actually influence my own in the slightest. A few months after joining the platform, I decided I would stop looking at other people's performance and stop trying to make as much as possible, and instead just have fun and interact with people. The way this platform was intended to be used. And ironically, I've found that in my own personal case this method works a lot better, and brings me more joy anyway.

On to the next year

Of course, as long as Steemit keeps working I'll probably keep Steeming, so for the upcoming year you can all rest assured that you'll get more-or-less daily content from me. My aim is always to keep posting at least an article every day, and I'll probably never post more than three times a day. Nobody likes their feed getting spammed, after all, and of course there's only so much time and energy in a day to write these articles.

I'm slowly changing up some things though, like cleaning up my personal Feed. In the early stages I would follow pretty much anybody who was nice to me to build my contacts, but it has cluttered up my feed with posts that don't interest me at all. All those generic motivational postings are wasted on me anyway... Lately I have been removing a few people from my Follow list every now and then, and shortening the list to include mainly crypto-bloggers and I plan to continue to do so until my Feed actually becomes filled with content that interests me truly. This should give authors whose work I enjoy a bigger chance of catching my eye, which works better all around anyway.

If I had to make a goal for myself here on Steemit, it would be that one year from now I will have doubled my SP to at least 500, and increase my followers to 4000. Let's see if I make it! I'm assuming, you'll be here next year too, right??